


Transcendence

by rhysanity



Category: The Owl House (Cartoon)
Genre: Be nice in the comments please, Don't hold this against me Jesus, F/F, I would be that girl, Imagine going to hell for not tagging a fic properly, Please forgive me for my sins, Soulmates AU, i don't know how to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 12:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30089250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhysanity/pseuds/rhysanity
Summary: They are very different people. But even in the end, it will always be them.Boscha and Skara, across universes. A Soulmates AU.
Relationships: Amity Blight/Luz Noceda, Boscha/Skara (The Owl House), implied
Comments: 5
Kudos: 30





	Transcendence

The stars were bright tonight.

Skara was a few feet below, curled on her side in a square of moonlight and sleeping bag, trying and failing not to doze off. Her hair fell in front of her face and hid part of it. Boscha was struck by the irresistible urge to brush it away, so she rolled over onto her side and reached out to do it. It wouldn't matter in a few hours anyway.

"Hey, Bosch," Skara said, expression a secret even through the glitter of starlight. "Do you think we'll always be friends?"

"Uh, _duh,_ " Boscha answered. She was not sleepy at all. "Of course we will. What do you expect?"

A laugh from below. "Nothing. Just a question."

Her even, quiet breathing a few moments later told Boscha that she was the only one awake now. But she didn't join in; she stared at the grainy ceiling and drifted. 

Somewhere in her gut was a distant, quiet tug.

**~**

Boscha stumbled into the university's computer lab just before the clock struck a quiet 2 AM. The fluorescents burned all the way to the backs of her eyes, and she hissed under her breath at the resulting headache. Just this _one_ paper. Just this one. Stupid. Paper.

Of course her printer just _had_ to break tonight. She really should have planned ahead.

Her laptop booted up silently. She found the document, hit the button, and the printer whirred and clicked like it was doing something.

But it didn't spit anything out. Boscha even punched it twice, just for good measure. Nothing happened. The fluorescents were still searing. She was no closer to having this assignment fully complete.

"Fuck," she murmured, then did the reasonable thing and screamed.

As soon as she started, though, there was a yelp from right behind her. 

"What the _fuck—"_ Boscha began, but stopped when she saw the person who stood in the hallway.

"Um. Hey?" the girl smiled, gray eyes dark with exhaustion but still filled with something shining and silver. She had a — clarinet? trumpet? Boscha had never really understood the difference between all those brassy instruments — tucked under her arm, and she was wearing a gray flannel and she looked mega super ultra gay. Which was not a bad thing. The complete opposite, actually.

"What the fuck," Boscha repeated, letting her laptop slide back into its bag. The printer beside her made a tired clanking noise, then died completely.

The other girl stood there for a second, adjusting the instrument under her arm, then continued. "Are you... good? I was just passing by and saw you just. Standing here. Screaming."

"You were just _passing by._ At two in the goddamn morning."

She seemed to be considering the merits of lying. Boscha gave the girl her best it's-such-an-ungodly-hour-that-I-might-actually-legitimately-murder-you-right-now glance, and she caved: "I mean... I kinda borrowed an instrument from the university's arts program and forgot to give it back and now I'm trying to return it before they find out I was the last person who had it?"

"Is that a question or an answer?" Boscha asked. In a delirious kind of way, she felt like laughing.

"It's," the student stopped, stared at her. "You are a jerk."

"Oh, sorry," Boscha said, trying to hide her grin for as long as possible. "Pardon me. Should I use my dining table manners at two in the morning for you, my lady?"

"It's Skara," the girl tossed an arm up to rub at her forehead. "Okay, why are _you_ here? Do enlighten me, uh, Sir— What's even your name?"

Boscha avoided her question, choosing instead to punch the poor printer again. She thought she saw a dent, even, but she was too sleepy to tell. "Stupid thing won't print out my essay."

Skara rolled her eyes. "That's it?"

"Woah, invalidating my issues now. I see how it is."

She didn't respond, just sighed. Briefly, Boscha felt bad because the girl looked Tired As Hell, but then she didn't anymore, because Boscha was also Tired As Hell.

Her phone came out of her pocket — she had the _exact same_ case Boscha had, pink and sparkly, how was that even possible? — and she punched in a number and pressed it against her left ear. "Hey! Oh, thank god you're up. Someone's having issues with the printer. Can you— okay. Okay. Five? Okay, great. Thanksyou'rethebestbye!" She slid it back into her pocket and stepped a little closer to Boscha. "So. My friend's coming down to fix it."

"Cool," Boscha said, then remembered those dinner-table manners. "Oh. Thanks, I guess."

Skara offered her a soft smile that made something in her brain do backflips and frontflips. "Don't mention it." They stood there in the stillness for a moment, washed over by white light. Then Skara said, "I should be heading out. I'll see you around!"

Boscha scrambled for something to keep her there — thought of a million bad ideas, settled on a, "My name's Boscha." as the girl went to leave the lab.

Skara stopped for a moment. Turned, and something in her gaze was like an anchor.

~

When Skara was born, the Healer said her Soulmark would never find a match. While her mother's shone neon-orange across her collarbone and her father's was the same shade on the bridge of his nose, Skara's would always be a dull, pale blue, almost like the sky but not quite.

She was an anomaly. A chipped bicep among a row of statues.

It made a difference. Her parents loved her all the same, but when she turned around to stare at the window she could always feel their aching glances on the back of her arm where her matchless mark was. It wounded deeper than words ever could.

But: when she was ten.

When she was ten years old, her parents set up a meeting with an important client. Skara had to stay in the study, and sit, and be relatively quiet. (They didn't need to tell her the last part. She always was.)

The view from the window was endless, rolling green, the streak of a char-black road. Skara got bored and drummed out a beat on the sill, then another on the glass. Soon enough, she had a rhythm going: a jaunty beat that kept her entertained. 

"What are you doing?"

Skara turned, and there was someone in the wooden doorway of her parents' study, with pink hair and blue eyes. She carried herself differently from the other children Skara had seen — stood straight and didn't slouch when she walked.

"I don't know," Skara said. She stopped tapping the beat. "What are _you_ doing?"

"Our parents are yelling at each other," the kid explained. "It's dumb."

Skara giggled. "Yeah. It is dumb."

Pink hair looked very pleased with herself. "What's your name?"

"Skara," said Skara.

"Okay. I'm Boscha," said Boscha. "And I'm gonna be your friend."

Skara had friends — people who clasped hands to steady her while she stumbled over pebbles, people who laughed warm and loud with her and tossed jokes back faster than she could make them. People who, like this girl, stumbled in and ended up in her bunch.

This one was different.

"Show me, then," Skara said.

It turned out that Boscha was not warm to many people. But she came over more and more often, made herself at home in Skara's windowsill and made the char of the blackstreak road her own. She was chilly to Skara's friends, and a bit of a mess.

Skara warmed their hands by the fireplace in the wintertime.

Boscha had a streak of a neon red in the crook of her elbow. It had been neon when she was born; it could never glow any brighter. The Healer had said that she didn't have a soulmate. When she grasped Skara's hand by the luminescent fireplace at sixteen, neither of them lit up.

But one day they were skipping rocks over the lake, and Boscha whooped and cheered and wrapped Skara in a hug when she finally got one to bounce. Skara's heart was warm and heavy in her chest all of a sudden. Everything clicked into place except the streak on her bicep, and that was okay.

She couldn't disagree when Boscha claimed: "We're friends now."

~

Boscha squinted across the field. The dazzle of heat hadn't quite left her eyes yet, but down below, Skara was pitching to the next batsman. It was a zinger of a pitch, but no: rain started to drizzle across the field, and the air, which had been thick with moisture, now sizzled with a dangerous sort of electricity. The game was postponed until tomorrow.

The team filed into the locker room in disjointed pairs: Amelia and Eileen, Cat and Bo, Willow and Skara. Amity, Luz, off in their own little world as usual. Skara tossed her darkblue cap down into Boscha's lap, then joined her on the bench.

"How are you?" she asked, though she was the one dripping from head to toe with rainwater.

"Does it matter?" Boscha countered. She did not expect an answer. She reached out and thumbed a droplet off Skara's cheekbone.

Skara smiled, didn't answer even as Boscha's hand lingered there. "I'm really sorry about your leg."

Boscha glanced down at the cast wrapping her broken shin, then shrugged. "Shit happens. You wanna get something to eat?"

"Mm." Skara considered. "We gotta get around the paparazzi. And sneak away from the afterparty."

"I've got a few ideas," Boscha said. Noticed, all of a sudden; tore her hand away like it'd been burned. Maybe it had been. Her face was on fire.

From across the room, Amelia yelled: "Just kiss already!"

Boscha was seriously considering getting up and hobbling across the room on her crutches just to punch her in the face, but of course, Skara's answering laugh stopped anything like that in its tracks.

"Pizza?" she asked. Boscha would never get over the way she looked at her: like there was only one person in the entire universe.

"Sure," Boscha managed. "Pizza. Then home."

They didn't get pizza, and they didn't go home (well, in a sense, they did).

Boscha ended up at Skara's apartment, and crashed with her on the rough, rigid, uncomfortable couch and watched the same movie over and over and over until Netflix handed them the _Are you still watching?_ message. It didn't get an answer, because Boscha had Skara's head on her shoulder and both of them were fast asleep. 

A normal night, but Boscha usually never dreamed. Never had the energy to.

Tonight, she dreamed: of ethereal music, of a reddish sky, of a fiery ball slung towards a moving target, and _Skara,_ with an unfamiliar instrument in her palms and twin galaxies in her eyes.

~

Skara's protection was intolerable. Incorrigible.

The thick summer heat was uncuttable and all-consuming. The guard was infuriatingly unaffected by it all, leant up against a rough—hewn post that kept the stable's roof from collapsing. She observed her nearly-perfect nails, a habit she'd had since childhood, and adjusted her ( _heavy_ ) armor.

"Of course," Boscha continued, "I would prefer not to smudge my complexion by going out in this sort of weather. _You_ know that."

"Are you a knight or a noblewoman?" Skara snapped, startled at herself. She was normally much friendlier — this was not becoming of her. "My apologies. But I require the best protection on my journey to King Belos' domain, and... you are the best." _Unfortunately,_ she added silently. 

Boscha seemed pleased at the reluctant compliment. She drew herself up and said, "Alright. I would have to pack a fair amount of supplies, though. I don't wish to be burnt."

"Well, I'm not stopping you," Skara muttered. "Just— behave, okay? Don't antagonize anyone."

"You know I don't attack unless I am attacked."

"You know that is not true. The Parks are still furious at you."

"The Parks are irrelevant."

"They are _not—_ "

"Just because you had _one_ star-struck summer romance with Willow, yes?"

" _It was not a romance_." Skara rubbed at her forehead. An old habit. "We are bickering like children."

"We are children," Boscha said. "Well, you are."

"I am a week younger than you," Skara muttered petulantly. "I don't think it's that significant."

Boscha did not respond, simply made the rather immature gesture of pulling her visor down to hide her face. "As you say, princess."

The grasses waved their straw-colored way over the thick silt. Skara climbed onto her horse. Above, the sky was a suffocatingly hot blue.

"Ready, brave knight?" she teased.

Boscha did not climb onto her horse so much as flow, gracefully, like a thin and trickling brook, so opposite to the rest of her nature. "I always am."

The horses clopped their ways across the silt. The sun burned lower and lower, and though Skara had to stop herself from glancing over at her companion every now and then, it was a peaceful journey.

Soon enough, when the stars were just starting to show pinpricks through the night-blue, they halted. In the thick of the woods, they settled down to make a camp. Skara brought a fire to life with the tinder in her bag. Boscha stared up at the sky and was almost wholly lit up by the moon.

There was a saying in their kingdom, something about how even old friends looked different in a certain shadow. _She_ looked different; where she had been familiar, she was now everything else.

Under the moonlight, Boscha asked, "Do you ever get the feeling we've done this before, Skara?"

~

Boscha was _not_ looking forward to this.

Selene's fangirling was definitely not something that should make her drag herself to this place, but she couldn't say she wasn't curious. Everyone gushed about the The Hexgirls, who were the perfect mix of corporate and alternative — just niche enough to appeal to the hipsters and mainstream enough to be up-and-coming. Boscha scoffed every time she heard their name, or any of their songs on the radio, or anything about them, really.

She couldn't ever stay away for long, though. That was how it was with _her_.

"Islesville! What an _incredible_ little town!" Skara exclaimed into the microphone. She seemed to suddenly forget that she had lived here her entire childhood, had gone to middle school and high school and all of Boscha's birthday parties here. "I'm so excited to be here!"

It felt odd, being shoved to the side along with their childhood, but a sudden rush of spite flowed through to fill the hole.

"SURE YOU ARE, SKAR," Boscha yelled.

Selene made a valiant effort to distance herself, clearly mortified. She'd expected the shout to get lost in the crowd, had half-hoped that it would, but Skara went ramrod-rigid for a moment and her eyes roved over the masses of people.

"Wait," she whispered. Boscha blinked, something gathering behind her eyes. _She remembers._

She tried to wave at her through the crowd, but the crowd was much, much too large, and the gesture was artfully swallowed. Skara's searching gaze passed her painfully by.

Skara disguised her outburst as a cough and continued. "Sorry about that, folks! Okay, first up on the list—"

There had been earplugs stuffed into her right and left pockets for situations like this, but they seemed to have fallen out. This time, Boscha let herself listen.

 _I'm sorry,_ Skara sang, _for leaving my heart at your house._

Boscha found that she was sorry, too. She turned around and shouldered her way past the roaring people and the old, old memories. Selene called after her, but she would be fine — she had Cat and Amelia. Boscha would be content with herself and a can of disgustingly warm soda.

She wasn't really sure where she was going once she got outside. The city was quiet at night. She ended up turning into the lee between two buildings and making long, lithe strides up and down the gravel. Her ears still rang from the din of the concert.

And then, after an hour or two:

There was the crunch of gravel

A warm presence beside her

And the almost-silent, ever-Skara murmur of, "Bosch?"

* * *

Skara knew the world was ending.

That was pretty much all she knew. There had been a couple apocalypses. Crop failure. Some radioactive fallout for good measure. Hairline fractures along the shard of glass they called a planet. The thing is, nobody was really sure what was going on. Just that in a couple hours, days, weeks, the sunflare would arrive and all of it would be burnt clean. 

Maybe something would make its way up from the ashes. Maybe not.

So she sat on the desiccated metal of someone's roof and watched the sun rise towards the course of humanity's ending. Tonight, the sky was red. Not a gentle red, either — it was a deep, bruising color, harsher than blood.

Thunder growled overhead, a sonorous death knell.

Boscha, usually frantic and fervent about it all, was smudged with dirt but unfazed. The curl of her grin was the only thing that was real anymore; the gnarled wasteland around them paled in stark comparison.

Something cut to the bone: deja vu.

"Here we go again," Boscha said. Something cold trickled down Skara's spine — not enough to stall the heat, just enough to unsettle.

"Again?" she asked.

Boscha turned. Her eyes, normally such an electric blue, were dull and tired. As though it was 2 AM again, and they were— wait, that's not— that never— 

She reached out and grabbed Skara's hand with her own. This was all wrong — her hands should have been calloused and rough and hot from a lifetime of survival and the defiant heat, but they were soft. Cool.

Skara blinked, but her eyes closed at different points in time. Something was slowing her down. Something _wrong._

Then, despite everything, Boscha grinned. "Skar. Try to remember."

"You're delirious," Skara told her. "Are you okay? I can get— I can get some water or something, I think we still have some left."

"No! Don't you see?" Boscha shook her head fervently. "This has _happened_ before, Skara. It's all happened before."

"Show me," Skara said, but Boscha did nothing but gesture at the barren expanse of land before them.

The sun rose another inch, and then, on the edges of the horizon, they noticed the telltale mirage. The end was almost here. 

Somewhere in the glimmer of heat, here is what Skara saw:

* * *

_And the almost-silent, ever-Skara murmur of, "Bosch?_

"Oh. It's you," Boscha said. Skara shifted uncomfortably, one foot to the other like the ground she was standing on was no longer stable. "Come to mingle with the common folk?"

Boscha crushed the soda can in her fist and dropkicked it off to the side. She stepped closer in an effort to intimidate, but it was a bad idea because now she had heavy butterflies weighing down her stomach.

"I missed you," said Skara. She looked earnest, which was the worst part.

" _Islesville! What an_ incredible _little town!_ " Boscha mocked. It had no bite to it. "If you missed me, you could've kept in touch. You had my number."

"I broke my phone!"

"You have my address."

"I was _busy_ , Boscha."

"Sure you were," Boscha said. "I was too, you know. It takes effort being this awesome. But I never forgot about you."

Skara looked up at her. She'd grown about an inch, which fortunately still wasn't much in comparison to Boscha. "I would _never_ forget about you."

Something drizzled off one of the fire escapes way above — a raindrop. They should have been getting to shelter, and soon, but Boscha wanted to keep pushing. "Oh yeah?"

"Oh yeah," Skara repeated.

They stayed like that for a while, a silent staring contest. Boscha drank it in, the newness of someone she had known for too long, though she pretended she wasn't.

When it started to come down, she tugged Boscha into the shade of one of the metal fire escapes overhead. It smelled like rain, like moss and smoke, and when Skara broke the silence by blurting, "Remember when we kissed in junior year?" Boscha almost stumbled backwards into the downpour.

" _What,_ " she spluttered, "What does this have to do with _anything,_ Skar?"

The nickname was an old habit. She tried not to think about it too much.

"That was nice," Skara confessed, eventually. "You were nice."

Boscha raised an eyebrow. "Girl, are you drunk? I was never nice."

"No! I just— I don't know." Skara shook her head, carefully pulled the hood on her jacket up. "Forget I said anything. I just wanted— ugh. Forget it."

She turned to leave, and in that moment, Boscha saw it: the flash of a pale-blue. She reached out to catch Skara's hand in a gentle grip, intertwined their fingers without really thinking about it. Skara turned around, expression all confusion and something else, something—

"Show me," Boscha said.

~

_Boscha asked, "Do you ever get the feeling we've done this before, Skara?"_

"I don't know what you mean," Skara said, as Boscha lifted the steel helm from her head. It had been too big for her, and now it fit so snugly that she had to pull it off instead of slide. Skara watched the motion with careful eyes. "I think I'd remember going on a journey like this."

"Would you?" Boscha jibed. She knelt, leaned forward to warm her palms by the crackling fire. A strand of hair escaped her bun and snapped in the wind. "I'm not sure about that, Princess. I think we are both experiencing a strange kind of amnesia."

Despite herself, Skara wanted to know what that meant. Boscha wasn't usually so reverent. "How so?"

"I keep seeing — _things_ that don't belong to us. People. Places. In the corners of my eyes. It's us, but it is not _us._ "

Skara stared. Something crept, slowly, cold and sluggish across her mind. "Ah, it seems it has come to pass."

"What has?" Boscha leaned in, closer. It was a miracle she didn't go too close to the campfire and catch on fire. "Tell me."

"Legends say," For a moment, Skara watched her with an intensity, watched her eagerly match this enthusiasm. Then she burst out into a laugh, "That you've gone nuts."

Boscha scrambled away from the fire, clearly and violently offended by this betrayal. "I am serious, Skara!"

"I think you should lie down, Boscha. I am worried," Skara told her. She scooted closer, reached over to lay the back of her hand across Boscha's forehead. "I _knew_ it. You're running a fever."

"The only place I'm running," Boscha said solemnly, "Is away from you."

But she obliged, lied down across the burlap they'd spread across the rocky ground, let Skara drape an extra layer of warmth over her. It was only when Skara was getting ready for sleep, measured, even breaths the only sound in the clearing, that she saw it.

A flash of red down in the crook of Boscha's elbow. Almost like blood, but much too bright. Much too neon. 

As quickly as it had appeared, it was gone.

~

_She dreamed of ethereal music, of a reddish sky, of a fiery ball slung towards a moving target, and Skara, with an unfamiliar instrument in her palms and twin galaxies in her eyes._

Boscha woke in stages. It started with the noticing; the ceramic brown turtle that Skara always refused to take off her coffee table, glinting under the sunlight. The violin case, empty and open in the center of the rug. The music.

She didn't get up, only sank back into the uncomfortable couch and listened to the timbre of it. She'd been planning to wake up early today; had wanted to head to the airy kitchen and make breakfast for them and have a lazy, too-domestic morning before practice.

The notes were rich and amber and thick, like a very good cheesecake (god, she was hungry — but things like that had never mattered in moments like that).

For a minute, it was so palpable that Boscha almost thought she could make out the imaginary lyrics under the melody. _I'm sorry I left my heart at your house._

Boscha blinked. She'd never been the poetic type — where had that come from?

Trying to search for it was like looking towards something that wasn't there. It was like reaching towards some blue-grey infinity that was so blurry it had never really been there at all. It was the edge of something greater than her, balancing on the palms of her hands.

The notes washed over her in a sudden forte. They diminuendoed, tiptoed softly into an arpeggio, and Boscha fell asleep.

A few hours later, she woke up again. The phone's clock informed her that it was six in the morning; it was still dark outside.

Boscha wondered if all that had ever happened at all, the reaching towards that barren expanse, the cake-rich music, that keyless question. She glanced over towards Skara beside her, a gray-eyed form that was sleep-babbling something about hexes and girls with a crinkled eyebrow. She decided that it had never really mattered.

~

_"Soulmarks are dumb," Boscha said._

Skara had learned the directions to Boscha's house like the back of her bicep. Sometimes she dropped down from the cold glass window and ran all the way. Her lungs burned, and she only ever got a chance to rest when she selected a pebble to send at Boscha's back wall.

Boscha complained and claimed she hated it, but Skara always caught her waiting at the window. And after that, when they were both standing outside under the starglow, their soulmarks glowed like they should have.

The worst part about it was the surprise, and after that, the concealment of it.

Sometimes people's eyes would flick down to their joined hands. To the too-pale streak on her arm. Sometimes those eyes hardened. Sometimes those mouths curled the wrong direction. Sometimes they even said it out loud.

Boscha's aunt asked: "Shouldn't you two be romancing your soulmates?"

"I don't have one, auntie," Boscha snapped, at around the same time that Skara said, "I'm not romancing anyone."

The woman stared at them both, then sighed a long, long sigh that didn't say much of anything.

Later, wading through the middle of the local corn maze in the hot midday sun, Skara caught her looking. But she didn't ask. And she didn't ask when Boscha let go of her hand when they reached the center. And she didn't ask when Boscha stormed off in the wrong direction.

She went after her, of course, just to make sure she didn't get lost.

Boscha stopped walking and turned around. Half her hair concealed her face; it was down today, which wasn't much of a smart decision, considering the wind. It looked good, though. "Why are you following me?"

"I'm your friend," Skara said. She didn't think that was much of an answer, though.

Boscha didn't seem to think so, either. Her mouth curled, just like her aunt's did. Blood was not thicker than water, not in the scheme of things, but it did stain an awful lot. The disdainful curve of it should have been repelling, but Skara only stepped closer.

"Skara, what are you doing," Boscha said. It was not a question.

"Um. Not much," Skara said, gesturing around uselessly. It was not an answer.

"Okay. Well," she rolled her eyes, "I'm gonna head back. Have fun with. This."

Skara did the only thing she could think of and blurted out the truth, which was, "You're my soulmate."

Boscha raised a skeptical eyebrow. She looked from side to side as though there was someone else that Skara could be referring to. "Um, no I'm not. I don't have one."

"I don't care about the mark," Skara groaned. "I'm not talking about the mark. I'm talking about us. Do you know how long we've been friends?"

Boscha didn't say anything. She looked calculating.

Skara didn't actually remember the answer, so she fudged the numbers: "Uh. Years. And is there anyone else you've met that... y'know. You actually—"

"No," Boscha interrupted, before Skara could embarrass herself more. "No, I haven't. But that doesn't mean anything, right?"

"I don't know." Skara said. She started forward to shoulder past Boscha, to fix this with avoidance like she knew she could.

Boscha stopped her with an outstretched arm. The cornstalks brushed past like ghost touches, and despite the thick heat, she shivered.

"Right?" Boscha asked again.

She couldn't bring herself to say it. Her soulmark had always seemed so wrongly placed, wrongly chosen. The color, too: she'd always wanted a warmer color. It didn't seem right that such a small thing should choose anything for her.

"No," Skara said. The sky loomed, blue and oppressive, and the imaginary stopwatch ticked down to zero.

She listed forward, but only slightly. Boscha pulled her the next few inches. 

~

_Skara stopped for a moment. Turned, and something in her gaze was like an anchor._

They exchanged numbers and went out to eat the next weekend. It was only a date, but:

Skara talked to Boscha like she'd known her a whole lifetime and still hadn't gotten tired just yet. She talked about stretching high school rehearsals, the song she'd been trying to transpose to the French Horn, those botched-up solos back in high school when no one had known what they were doing. When they scrambled to take the bill, Skara won, and Boscha finally, petulantly let her.

The air outside the restaurant was chilly and charged. Overhead, the clouds were moving too fast, too bleak, too heavy. If it wasn't tornado season yet, it would be very soon.

But: Skara's flannel was a comfort-red slash against the grey, and her smile was a blow to the cold, and her hand in Boscha's was so central and _so_ distracting.

"I didn't _steal_ it, oh my god," Skara complained. "I just. Borrowed it for two weeks without telling anyone. _You_ stole our entire stock of rugby balls, like what was even up with that?"

If everything in every universe was like this, bickering and gentle shoves and this girl who stole expensive instruments from universities and helped fellow lesbians out, Boscha thought she could handle a few tornadoes.

**~**

Something was alright this morning. Something that had been wrong, like a pulled muscle, like an arrhythmic heartbeat, was okay now. She could feel it.

The sunlight slanting through Boscha's window was always the first thing Skara would notice when she woke up after a sleepover. The second thing was always Boscha, but Boscha wasn't still in bed today. She usually wasn't; she was always the one to wake up first, but today she wasn't at the mirror, either.

There was a rush of panic through Skara's chest — she'd had some _awful_ nightmares that she couldn't quite remember — until she saw her at the door. Same yellow uniform, same pale-blue eyes. She wasn't sure why she expected it to be any different.

"Hey," Boscha said. "Let me show you something."

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, I hope you enjoyed this. Thank you to my friend ugg for beta reading and helping me write some of the parts, and to Solomon for helping out with some of the concepts.


End file.
